GRA 19703
Master Thesis
Thesis Master of Science
The Dark Side of Influencer Marketing
Navn: Camilla Ødegård Olsen, Gina Marie Sandholmen
Start: 15.01.2019 09.00
Finish: 01.07.2019 12.00
Master Thesis
At BI Norwegian business school
- The Dark Side of Influencer Marketing -
Examcode and name:
GRA 19703 – Master Thesis
Supervisor:
Even Johan Lanseng Study Program:
Master of Science in Strategic Marketing Management
Start date:
15.01.2019
End date:
01.07.2019
Campus:
BI Oslo
Table of content
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ... III ABSTRACT ... IV
1.0 INTRODUCTION ... 1
1.1SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER AND BRAND REPUTATION ... 1
1.2WHY DO WE STILL USE IT? ... 3
1.3THE BUSINESS OF INFLUENCER MARKETING ... 4
1.4PRESENTING OUR RESEARCH... 5
1.5RESEARCH QUESTIONS ... 5
2.0 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 6
2.1SOCIAL MEDIA IS A TOOL FOR PRODUCT INFORMATION ... 6
2.2HOW IT DIFFERS FROM CELEBRITIES ... 7
2.3INFLUENCER MARKETING CHANGES THE GAME ... 10
2.4HOW WE RELATE TO INFLUENCERS AND CELEBRITIES ... 11
2.5IDEAL- AND ACTUAL SELF ... 12
2.6WHY MICRO-INFLUENCER APPEALS TO PEOPLE'S ACTUAL SELF ... 13
2.7TRANSFERENCE OF NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS ... 15
2.8THE ONE WHO SPEAKS TAKES THE NOISE ... 15
2.9MICRO INFLUENCERS, EITHER LIFESTYLE OR EXPERT ... 17
2.10MICRO INFLUENCERS AND PRODUCT TYPE ... 17
2.11AUTHORITY AND SOCIAL PROOF: TOOLS FOR PERSUASION ... 19
2.12ONLINE SOCIAL PROOF ... 20
3.0 METHODOLOGY ... 23
3.1POPULATION (BOTH STUDIES) ... 23
3.2STUDY DESIGN STUDY 1 ... 23
3.3DATA COLLECTION ... 24
3.4QUESTIONNAIRE BUILD UP ... 24
3.5PROCEDURE ... 25
Model 1: Outline of Questionnaire 1 Study 1 ... 26
3.6FIRST PART: PRE-TEST ... 26
3.7ASSIGNED CONDITION ... 28
3.8CLEANING OF DATA ... 28
Model 2: Descriptive statistics study 1 ... 29
4.0 RESULTS STUDY 1 ... 30
4.1CRONBACH'S ALPHA ... 30
4.3.2 Stylish influencer ... 34
5.0 STUDY 2 ... 35
5.1STUDY DESIGN STUDY 2 ... 35
5.2DATA COLLECTION ... 35
5.3CLEANING OF DATA ... 35
5.4PROCEDURE ... 36
5.5PRE-TEST ... 37
5.6ASSIGNED CONDITION ... 37
6.0 RESULTS STUDY 2 ... 38
Model 3: Self-image congruence mediating effect ... 39
6.1CHECKING FOR ASSUMPTIONS ... 39
6.2MANCOVA TEST ... 41
Model 4: Descriptive statistics study 2 ... 41
6.3SELF-IMAGE CONGRUENCE ... 42
7.0 DISCUSSION ... 44
8.0 CONCLUSIONS AND CONTRIBUTIONS ... 48
9.0 FURTHER RESEARCH AND LIMITATIONS ... 49
10.0 REFERENCE LIST ... 53
11.0 APPENDIX ... 59
11.1APPENDIX 1:MAIN MODEL ... 59
11.2APPENDIX 2:QUESTIONNAIRE 1STUDY 1 ... 59
11.3APPENDIX 3:COMMENT SECTION ... 67
11.4APPENDIX 4:CRONBACH’S ALPHA STUDY 1 ... 68
11.5APPENDIX 5:QUESTIONNAIRE 2STUDY 2 ... 69
11.6APPENDIX 6:CRONBACH’S ALPHA STUDY 2 ... 77
Acknowledgement
This thesis signalize the end of five irreplaceable years of education, and we are left with well-kept memories. We are proud to say that we have completed our master's degree at BI business school. These five years has been a journey with many impressions, which has made us experience huge personal- and academic development.
We are therefore thankful for what BI business school has provided us in light of grateful moments, long lasting friendships and thorough understanding of real business.
Theses like this are dependent on people engaging in our work. We therefore appreciate all the support we have got from family, friends and respondents who voluntarily chose to carry out our questionnaires.
With learning follows thousand questions, and our supervisor, Even Johan Lanseng, has been important for us whenever we experienced uncertainty. He guided us through this thesis and taught us how to think in order to find answers on our own.
His guidance has therefore been important, and we appreciate both his willingness to teach as well as his friendliness.
BI Norwegian Business School Oslo, Norway
July 1, 2019
___________________________ __________________________
Gina Marie Sandholmen Camilla Ødegård Olsen
Abstract
Influencer marketing has over time evolved into a trend within marketing, and more businesses uses it as a tool as they consider this to be an accurate and effective way of doing marketing. As this new trend of marketing products and services has received lot of positive publicity, it's easy to forget that influencer marketing, like many other trends, also has its downsides. This paper addresses the disadvantages associated with influencer marketing, where we want to look further into how negative behavior from an influencer, collaborating with a brand, affects both the influencer and the brand.
We want to contribute to the literature by two different studies. Our first study addresses micro influencers negative behavior, by performing between subjects experiments with pre- and post tests. We seek to understand how brands and influencers will be affected due to influencers negative behavior, and if different combinations of influencers (lifestyle- and expert influencers), products (hedonic or utilitarian) and comment section (none, positive or negative) will moderate this effect. We found it to be some differences related to this as expert influencers, when combined with utilitarian products and no comment section, received lower attitude scores from participants on the micro influencers perceived expertise. We found social proof to have an effect when expert influencers were paired with hedonic products. Here, we saw that participants evaluated the expert influencer less favorable when a negative comment section was added.
Besides this, marketing products through influencers makes an illusion of the promoted product being a recommendation rather than commercial, which let us believe that influencers will take most of the harm related to negative publicity for bad behavior. We found that brands who collaborates with negatively behaving influencers will experience some form of fallback, as respondents attitude and willingness to purchase the product decreased after treatment. Furthermore, we found this decrease in attitude to be larger for the negatively behaving influencer than for the brand.
Our second experiment addresses self congruence. We believe that consumers are more able to identify more with influencers as they fall somewhere between celebrities and personal relations. We find this relevant as brands today have to make trade offs related to whether they should appeal to consumers actual- or ideal self in their marketing. This second study is therefore constructed to compare how consumers relate to influencers and celebrities, and found that respondents had greater ability to compare their actual self towards influencers rather than celebrities.
1.0 Introduction
Influencer marketing has by the last few years become one of the biggest buzzwords when talking about new ways to both advertise and sell products and services online. Google Trends report (2019) mention that from 2017 until today,
“influencer marketing” had a rapid increase in searched words. Forbes magazine (2018) views influencer marketing as one of the twelve biggest trends for businesses to take advantage of in the coming future, and the majority of marketers that have used influencer marketing when promoting products claims it to be effective.
(Haran, 2019) As with any buzzword, businesses all over the world are eager to be a part of the new hip trends and use them regardless of their function and effect.
Though they may get the attention and publicity they desired, in the short term, with the use of an influencer, many companies are oblivious of the devastating effect these people can cause. Influencers can be considered a double sided sword, that at any time can cause major wounds to your business reputation. The risk assessment of this tool has yet to be discussed and highlighted in the literature, as researchers have been focusing on how to choose the right influencer based on different criteria.
Our contribution is therefore to detect the negative effect influencers may have on a brand, and if so, how devastating this effect may be or if the brand just may escape the dagger.
1.1 Social media influencer and brand reputation
Businesses is dependent of monitoring their reputation as this is said to be their most important value for succeeding. (Håkonsen, 2019) Engaging in actions that hurts businesses overall reputation can cause companies to lose a lot of money, especially today as ordinary people have the opportunity to express themselves online for everyone to see. United Airline got to know this when their staff was treating a customer in a bad manner. The customer wrote a song about his experience, distributed it on Youtube, and received more than 15 million views. In his catchy song, he made United Airline being associated with destruction of passengers' luggage, which again was destructive to United Airlines reputation, and resulted in their stocks decreasing by 10%. (Sickler, 2018) This example illustrates how fast it can go wrong for businesses when negative behavior from the company are shared through social media, which puts pressure on companies to act properly
at all times. These fast moving platforms has enabled all types of people to voice their opinions and make their view public for all the world to see.
Even though businesses today see great opportunities in using social media influencers when reaching out to customers, we believe that there are some downsides that might be overlooked. At first, these influencers are impossible for brands to fully control at all time, and brands that choose to collaborate with them risk being punished with unwanted associations if the influencer don't behave in accordance with desirable behavior. Besides this, social media influencers do have the opportunity to reach out to a great number of people, were both their behavior and written content have the opportunity to go viral for everyone to see. Companies are then not able to control the content, when or at which platforms the paid content is shared. Third party agencies usually decides the influencer based on some criteria and distribute the company brief. When working with larger macro influencers as e.g. The Kardashians, firms have more control, but the paid posts are often more commercial which can be at the expense of the influencers credibility, as we will look further into in our analysis. (Hatton, 2018)
Even though the United Airline example used above describes a situation were the customer wanted to punish United Airline on purpose, he established associations towards the company by performing a certain action. Influencers have this same capability and are able to either consciously or unconsciously transfer negative associations to a brand, though often with a greater effect due to their large follower base. There exists many examples of influencers losing their credibility because of their behavior, statements or failed posts in social media. Big celebrity influencer Scott Disick failed when collaborating with Bootea protein shake by posting their brief (when, where and what to post) with the Instagram picture instead of just the promotion text. (Hatton, 2018) This is however a mild example on what can go wrong, causing damage for the influencers’ credibility as well as the brands credibility. Other influencers have been connected to racist comments, making fun of suicide or anti-Semitic jokes. Leading to massive backlash and media interest.
(Grant & Kim, 2018) PewDiePie, the most subscribed and viewed influencer on Youtube, got his reputation tarnished after making anti-Semitic jokes on his channel. Leading to one of his biggest collaborators, Walt Disney Co. to cut all ties to the influencer due to media frenzy. (Winkler, Nicas & Fritz, 2017)
1.2 Why do we still use it?
Marketers can no longer only use regular online ads to reach their segments, as internet users finds online ads to be too aggressive and intrusive making them want to avoid the content. (Benes, 2018) Consumers are now able to install ad-blocking software or skip commercials when browsing on internet. According to a survey performed by eMarketer (2016) 86.6 million American people, 32% of all internet users worldwide, used ad-blocking in 2017. Using influencers is a great way to reach your target audience, because their opinions are still perceived as trustworthy and non-purposeful real opinions. Not likely triggering persuasion knowledge with consumers (De Veirman, Cauberghe & Hudders, 2017), making influencer marketing the gateway to communicate advertisements online.
Social media influencers possesses many of the same characteristics as the well known concept of opinion leader (they are informed experts, people look up to them etc..). Britner (2018) categorizes social media influencers as being somewhere between celebrities and close relations as he states that “..it falls somewhere between the aspiration you have for a celebrity and the trust you have for friends and family”. Major implication with this literature topic, as of today, is that the concept of influencers are often mixed with the concept of celebrities and other types of opinion leaders. Researchers has yet to establish a common ground on what they would refer to as a celebrity and influencer. This is one of our main contributions to the literature which we hope will clarify the differences and similarities with influencers and other type of opinion leaders.
Their label as “trustworthy friends” are not the only reason to use influencer marketing. Their operation methods are very effective, using a “always on” strategy to keep their platforms updated. This type of content production would be hard for a business to be able to maintain using their own content only. By using influencers they are able to distribute their content in a trustworthy and “up to date” channel with a mix of marketing and personal content from the influencer. Social media influencers have evolved alongside new social media channels as Vine, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube and so forth. Even though blogs still are popular channels used by many influencers (Sammis, Lincoln, Pomponi, Gassmann &
Zhou, 2016), it is more common that larger influencers also use more than one channel to reach their audience. This way, they are able to target different audience with the same main message by adapting the content to different channels. They
also use different channels to advertise content and redirect their audience to their other channels. This could be by posting a Snap-story telling their audience to
“swipe up” to be able to see their new blogpost about a product review or happenings from their everyday life. This way they use different tools and content to redirect and keep their audience's interest longer.
1.3 The business of influencer marketing
Influencers are not only a great tool to use for commercial marketing, as they are also used within other areas as politics and societal debates. Besides being used as a consumer reviewing products, they have become a spokesperson for the people and engage in societal changes by using their voices in political matters. A well known example in Norway is Sophie Elise Isaksen, who has expressed herself about animal rights, body complexes and climate matters like food consumption. Her participation in the latest “influencer debate” has led to politicians engaging in the matter of prohibiting advertisements for cosmetic operations and injections. The potential of this tool is large and unexplored, though businesses are rapidly finding new ways of using influencers in their marketing.
The providers are now seeing their value, and are no longer satisfied with only receiving free samples from big brands. The prices are varying and it is normal to distinguish between micro- and macro-influencers. Macro influencers have a wider follower base and are more publicly known, while micro influencers are operating with a smaller follower base and often within niche groups of people. According to numbers from Social Media Today (2018) macro-influencers can take up to $ 187,500 for one Youtube video and $75,000 for one Instagram post. However, these numbers decrease by over 98% if choosing a micro- influencer with less than 500,000 followers. Then the estimated prices is approximately $ 2,500 for a Youtube video and $1,000 for an Instagram post. This new type of micro- influencers also makes it possible for smaller companies with less marketing budgets to promote themselves. This research will mainly be focusing on micro- influencers as they have created a new type of opinion leaders that differ from earlier types, like celebrity endorsers and close relations.
1.4 Presenting our Research
In our research, we want to look further up on the negative side effects that can harm a brand when choosing an influencer. Influencers are making business out of sharing information about their privacy, and we want to look further into if this makes consumers feel stronger self-congruence towards them. We want to compare this with celebrities as influencers fall somewhere between a celebrity and private person.
Depending on the type of influencer, the audience is able to gain great knowledge of the influencer’s everyday life, thoughts, opinions and actions. The more transparent the influencer is, the more risk is it that one unfortunate opinion or action is going to be shared by the influencer. However, with the transparency influencers have to their audience contra celebrity endorsers, their followers may have a stronger relationship to the influencer, giving them more room for “making mistakes”.
It is then interesting to see if the authority of the influencer prevail their negative behavior and if the presence of follower’s opinions (social proof) may be greater than influencer’s authority. We also believe that different type of products may be affected differently by any negative behavior, as will be elaborated more in the literature review bellow. See visual representation of our main model in appendix 1 Main model.
1.5 Research questions
How will influencers negative behavior affect consumers’ attitude and is there any differences in how utilitarian products is affected in contrast to hedonic products?
Would the relationship between a negatively behaving influencer (expert or lifestyle) and type of product (hedonic or utilitarian) lead to consumers evaluating influencers less favorable
Will a negative comments-section, and the theory of social proof, lead to less authority for the influencer or will authority prevail when negative behavior is not connected to their field of expertise.
Is it more effective to implement influencers than celebrities as a marketing tool, and will the difference in effect be explained by self-image congruence between consumers and opinionleader.
With this research, we want to contribute to the research on influencer marketing and expanding our knowledge on the negative effects of attaching an influencer to a product or a brand. We believe that our findings can contribute to explain how this marketing tool affects products and brands in general, as well as being able to give an in depth analysis for the use of influencer marketing and its risks/
precautions. Our aspiration is to contribute to the literature of influencer marketing, and to clarify the meaning and usage of different types of influencers.
2.0 Theoretical framework
According to Erdogan (1999), firms have targeted consumers by celebrity endorsement since the late nineteenth century, and product placement has been a strategic brand-move long before Reese´s succeeded in the E.T movie in 1982.
(Newell, Salmon & Chang, 2006) Sponsorship had an effect on consumer goods even before its usage “exploded” within television (Lavin, 1995), and the world has always been surrounded by people with great influence on other people's attitude and behavior, also known as opinion leaders. (Lin, Bruning & Swarana, 2018)
2.1 Social media is a tool for product information
Opinion leaders have for a long time been perceived as guiding experts when consumers are finding themselves within uncertain environments. (Loeper, Steiner
& Stewart, 2014) Before, it was common to look for product-advice from both family, friends and neighbors as well as celebrities. Consumers are now using another tool for product information: social media. Online informational exchange about product consumption is considered more trustworthy compared to traditional marketing. (Lim & Chung, 2014) Even though consumers still can obtain recommendations from family, friends and neighbors online, social media has made it possible for consumers to gain product-information from a new type of endorser:
2.2 How it differs from celebrities
Social media influencers can according to Hatton (2018) be divided into macro- and micro influencers. She defines macro influencers as already known celebrities, who are able to reach out to a wider follower base. They are famous for their achievements within e.g. sports (David Beckham), movies (Angelina Jolie) or politics (Barack Obama). Abidin (2018 p. 4) states that mainstream celebrities mostly is associated with either “achievements, talents or positions” and people are commonly associating celebrities with a glamorous Hollywood life. Kowalczyk &
Pounders (2016) argues that consumers motivation to follow celebrities in social media relates to their curiosity about the celebrity's career and personal life (relationship, family, style and hobbies). They also states that following them in social media gives followers a feeling of experiencing the celebrity as a “real”
person.
Marwick (2015) mentions celebrities as something a person is, and says that micro- influencers are something someone do. Senft (2008) categorizes micro influencers as a form of microcelebrity that earn followers by being open about their personal life online. The term microcelebrity was first used to explain camgirls and their audience. (Abidin, 2018) Abidin (2018, p. 11) states that “these camgirls were knowingly broadcasting themselves to the public on the internet while attempting to accumulate fame”. They gained their popularity by using digital media technologies and platforms, were they branded themselves by interacting with their viewers by emotional labor. (Abidin, 2018) By using camgirls as an example, Senft (2008); Abidin (2018, p. 11) argues that “microcelebrities on the internet were unlike celebrities in the traditional entertainment industries on several counts- where traditional celebrities practice a sense of separation and distance from their audience, microcelebrities have their popularity premised on feelings of connection and interactive responsiveness with their audience; where traditional celebrities may be known for their performance craft and skills, microcelebrities are expected to display themselves unedited as “real” people with “real” issues; and where traditional celebrities may have extensive fame amon large global audience, microcelebrities exercise a popularity that while narrower in breadth is far deeper”.
Micro influencers are today generating traffic on their social media platforms by sharing perceived exclusive aspects of their lives, but the concept of entertaining others by sharing elements of people's private life in public is not new. According to Abidin (2018) people have for several years been entertained by having
“ordinary” people opening up about their daily issues in various talk shows.
Ordinary people have for a longer time guested talk shows as Dr. Phil were they talk openly about their issues in private life on television. Grindstaff (2002); Abidin (2018) explains this as “the money shot” were these “ordinary” peoples real emotions and reactions to specific elements makes viewers identify more with them, as their reactions are perceived as both real and authentic.
Besides being categorized as micro celebrities, there have been made several definitions about micro-influencers. Abidin (2015) states that many people might relate to micro-influencers as “bloggers”, “YouTubers” and “Instagrammers”.
Hatton (2018) describes micro-influencers as “normal people” with a smaller follower base. Senft (2008, p. 25); Abidin (20161, p. 3) defines micro-influencers as “a new style of online performance that involves people ‘amping up’ their popularity over the Web using technologies like video, blogs and social networking sites”. A collective term of all these definitions is that micro-influencers are regular people, which have gained their fame by using a variety of social media to reach out to a niche audience.
In the celebrity world, people who are interested in the celebrity is called “fans”
while people that engage with micro influencers are called “followers”. (Marwick
& Boyd, 2011; Abidin, 20162) This makes the illusion of the relationship between
“fans” and celebrities being more distanced compared to the relationship between
“followers” and micro influencers. (Abidin, 20162)
Opposite of mainstream celebrities, micro influencers do not possess any preexisting fame, but have managed to build up their own follower-base organically by writing entertaining content online. (INFLUENCERS THE NEW, 2016) They are giving their followers insight into their personal life by using both textual and visual tools online, and earns money by integrating advertising within their blogs
group of people” (Marwick, 2013, p. 114; Abidin, 20162, p. 3) were their followers perceive them as being authentic. (Abidin, 20161) Such micro influencers have managed to build up some form of expertise within different product categories, (Audrezet, De Kerviler & Moulard, 2018) and consumers sees them as trusted tastemakers. (De Veirman, et al., 2017)
Here, Lin, et al. (2018) illustrate such online social media influencers by referring to Bethany Mota, who has earned her position by talking about her fashion and traveling experiences online. She started her Youtube channel in June 2009 and have since that managed to earn more than 10 million subscribers. Giving her the opportunity to reach out to a great number of people with her messages, and by that making her valuable for brands. By only looking at the Norwegian market, we find online opinion leaders as Jørgine Massa Vasstrand (funkygine) who is perceived to be an expert within fitness, Caroline Berg Eriksen (fotballfrue) that is known for her desired lifestyle and cooking advice and Vegard Harm who has grown in social media by distancing himself from the glamorous and rather earn status by being funny and folksy.
According to De Veirman et al (2017) micro influencers are providing their followers with content related to their personal, everyday lives, as well as openness around their experiences and opinions. As well as they are making money on various advertised posts, they personalizes this by mixing it up with their everyday life making their followers believe that their advertisement is personally experienced. (Abidin, 20161) People are now following these perceived experts (micro influencers) in social media, and by that followers are being exposed to micro influencers collaborations with different brands. Brands do find these micro influencers attractive to use as followers sees this as a more authentic source of information compared to traditional marketing. (Influencer the new, 2016) Agathe Blanchon-Ehrsam, chief marketing officer of business consultancy and branding company Vivaldi, argues that the use of online social media influencers is an important marketing tool, as people find participating in another person's lifestyle more motivating than the performance of e.g. a top athlete. (Hershman, 2018) Micro influencers are perceived to be both knowledgeable and passionate about their favorite activities, and are also believed to spend a lot of time learning about their favorite brands. (Frothingham, 2016) Such online opinion leaders are valuable for brands as they according to the two-step-flow communication theory (Katz &
Lazarsfeld, 1995; Uzunoğlu & Kip, 2014) are providing their followers with product information based on how they are interpreting the brands message.
Consumers will therefore be indirectly affected by the brand, as brands today are seeking out to micro influencers making them endorse their products online by including their products in their daily posts as well as writing complete recommendations.
2.3 Influencer marketing changes the game
Abidin (2015) has established that there is a difference in how consumers view celebrities contra influencers. However, there has been done no research, to our knowledge, on what type of opinion leader (celebrity vs. influencer) that has the most effect and how they appeal to the person viewing their statements.
The use of online micro influencers are bringing some changes to the game. Before, when firms were marketing their products through celebrity endorsement, they did this by using traditional media channels. By having celebrities endorsing their products, brands are able to make their products receive desired associations from the celebrity. (Erdogan, 1999) Celebrities can according to Miciak & Shanklin (1994, p. 52) «act as a spokesperson for a sponsor´s company or provide a testimonial for its commercial offerings». There has been done lot of research on celebrity endorsement, as Keller (2013) argues for this to be a preferable strategy when brands want to shape their image through associations from celebrities. Even though the use of online social media influencer marketing could be compared with the well-known concept of celebrity endorsement, there are some inequalities. At first, using celebrities endorsing products through traditional media channels (television, radio, prints etc.) describes a situation where brands are communicating their messages to consumers, where receivers do not have the opportunity to make official statements about the message. By endorsing products through social media influencers, consumers have the opportunity to interact with the author (sender) by both leaving comments as well as sending direct messages to the contributor. (Lee
& Jang 2013)
By followers leaving comments or recommend the social platform to others, they are helping the influencer grow. (Casaló, Flavián & Ibáñez-Sánchez, 2018) Britner
will reply due to their large follower base. That's not necessarily the case for micro influencers, and Britner (2018) argues for that to be the reason why they see a 60%
higher engagement rate within campaigns involving micro influencers. An important aspect considering why micro influencers are stressing engagement within their posts deals with the fact that they depend on their contents to go viral for further growth. By followers recommending, liking and writing recommendations about what content they prefer, their audience have become a co- producer of value benefiting both themselves and the influencer.
This is according to Goldhaber (2009); Hartley (2013) important to consider as internet has made it possible for consumer to go from being passive to active. He states that as of before, consumers were only able to receive media content. Today, they have the opportunity to make actions by also linking, clicking and sharing different content making them become “producers of the most valuable resource of all: attention”. (Hartley, 2013, p. 351)
2.4 How we relate to influencers and celebrities
When people are engaging with a person's life over time, they start the formation of parasocial relationship with that person. (Escalas & Bettman, 2017) Hurton &
Wohl (1956); Escalas & Bettman (2017, p. 298) describes para-social relationship as «one-sided relationships that a media user establishes with a media figure, leading to a false sense of intimacy». Even though consumers are able to develop such a relationship with both mainstream celebrities and micro influencers, Abidin (2015) argues for it to be differences in how this perceived relationship develops between the parties. She argues that consumers are able to get an insight into celebrities’ lives by e.g. the celebrity being a guest in various talk shows. This describes a situation where consumers are getting insight into carefully calculated stories from both the celebrity and the talk show host.
On the other hand, Abidin (2015) states that micro influencers gives stories with more impressions, as it seems to be more real and natural. Opposite of guesting talk shows while elaborating on calculated stories, micro influencers shares content that is a result of spontaneous thoughts and feelings. With such unpredictable statements, they have the tendency to be described as somewhat “loose cannons”
among practitioners. (Williams, 2018)
2.5 Ideal- and actual self
Brands tries to appeal to consumers actual- or ideal- self to create a connection with the brand. They use commercials to portray their products as somewhat “down to earth” as well as creating emotional bonds with consumers when they appeals to their actual self. By doing so, brands appeals to who the consumer believe they are as a person. Others prefer to appeal to people's desires to become something they are not. By appealing to their ideal self, companies are able to “lure” consumers into thinking that buying a certain product will gain them popularity or other desired features. (Mälar, 2011)
On the other hand, consumers find it easier these days to block out commercials through ad- blocking software, meaning that “old marketing tricks” no longer have the desired effect as it used to. According to Gilmore & Pine (2007); Malar (2011) consumers now also crave more authenticity and reality from marketing. By using influencers, marketers are less likely to trigger persuasion knowledge because influencers’ opinions still are seen as trustworthy and non-purposeful. (De Veirman et al., 2017)
By using influencers in their marketing they are able to come closer to the consumer and create an emotional bond through an intermediary link. Although we have established earlier that influencers are seen more as friends (Britner, 2018), they still appeal to a somewhat desired lifestyle with the followers. However, this lifestyle might be closer to whom and what consumers already think they are, compared to the lifestyle a celebrity is portraying through their lavish lives.
Both influencers and celebrities have become brands of their own by building their own name through products and services. Therefore, by becoming “branded people”, they may appeal to consumers ideal- and actual- self in the same way as a brands can. A product or a brand are only able to construct a feeling based on e.g.
intangible attributes or advertising (Sirgy, 1985), but influencers and celebrities are actually able to mimic real personality traits to appeal to one or the other based on their human emotions.
According to Kressmann, Sirgy, Herrmann, Huber, Huber & Dong-Jin (2006, p.
955) “Self-image congruence refers to the match between consumers' self-concept
Sirgy (1985, p. 195) also states “This congruity, in turn, affects the consumer’s product preference and purchase intention.”
2.6 Why micro-influencer appeals to people's actual self
Micro influencers stress what their followers wants to read about, as they today generates traffic by providing their followers with insight into their personal life.
(De Veirman et al., 2017) Marwick & boyd’s (2011); Adidin (2015) found that providing followers with such personal information, is a tool that can be used to generate an impression of intimacy with followers. Adidin (2015, Influencers and commercial intimacies) describes “intimacy” as “how familiar and close followers feel to an Influencer”, and states that this effect is most likely to happen as micro influencers provides their followers with information that feels both exclusive and intimate. Abidin & Thompson (2012) says that influencers are able to generate personal attachments from their followers even though they are motivated by
“underlying commercial interests” when doing it. Abidin (2015) argues for this to happen based on four different underlying conditions: Commercial intimacies, interactive intimacies, reciprocal intimacies and disclosive intimacies.
Commercial intimacies happens as micro influencers uses their personal life as a tool to make their followers feel intimate with the micro influencer. (Abidin, 2015) She also argues for commercial intimacies to be stronger for lifestyle bloggers than for specialists, as lifestyle bloggers are mainly focusing on their everyday life while specialists are writing entertaining content about their lives while “hiding” most behind different themes as e.g. parenting, fitness etc.
Interactive intimacies happens as followers of micro-influencers have the opportunity to meet the micro-influencer by face-to-face meet-ups in both formal and informal settings. Abidin (2015) describes formal settings as meetups that are sponsored by different brands, whereas informal settings relates to meet-ups that are organized by the micro-influencer itself. What makes such meet-ups special with micro-influencers is according to Abidin (2015) that their followers expect them to be congruent with how they both behave and look in social media, making followers feel more physically attached to the micro-influencer and by that strengthen the felt intimacy.
Abidin (2015) argues that even though people are following celebrities in social media, they do not relate to their followers the same way as micro-influencers do.
While celebrities are distancing themselves more from their fans, micro-influencers are more likely to engage with their followers by both liking, answering as well as giving shout outs. By doing so, micro-influencers are able to generate reciprocal intimacy, and such activities will frame followers to perceive the micro-influencer as a friend. (Abidin & Thompson, 2012) Abidin (2015) describes disclosive intimacy as a result of the micro-influencer sharing various happenings in their life, making their followers feel like they have access to exclusive information. She makes different events as an example of this, were she tells that influencers use to show pictures of themselves in the dressing room getting their makeup done before various events. This allows their followers to experience such events through the micro-influencers eyes. Danesi (2008); Abidin (2015) says that followers sees this as more interesting than having access to mainstream celebrities “behind-the- scenes” pictures, as micro-influencers are perceived to represent commonality.
Because of these differences, Abidin (2015) states that when it comes to celebrities, people start the formation of parasocial relationship, while they engage in perceived interconnectedness with micro influencers. Even though she argues that followers of micro influencers are more able to get closer to them, she calls it “perceived” as the micro influencer, in the same way as celebrities, do have control over what they want to share about themselves with their followers. It is therefore also interesting to see if it is the self-image congruence between consumers and influencers or celebrities that makes one or the other a better marketing tool. We believe that influencers appeal to the actual self of the respondents, due to their friendly approach in their communication with their followers. They are considered as a trusted friend and not an idol in which celebrities often are described. An idol is short for an ideal or someone that has some wanted qualities. We therefore believe that a celebrity would appeal more to the respondents’ ideal self-image and how they would like to be perceived.
H1: Influencer marketing will have greater, positive, effect on consumers attitude and purchase intention towards a brand. This is based on their ability to connect to consumers actual self, and by that consumers are experiencing self-image congruence.
2.7 Transference of negative associations
One risk related to collaborating with opinion leaders in general is that brands are not able to control the person's daily behavior, and by that, they risk receiving unwanted associations from the collaborator. (Samuelsen et al., 2010) PepsiCo was a victim of choosing the wrong celebrity endorser by collaborating with Michael Jackson when his accusations of child molestation was at its peak. (Erdogan, 1999) When famous opinion leaders behaves in a way that is contrary to what is accepted, brands are quick in making actions regarding protections of themselves. Some examples of this are Lance Armstrong's loss of sponsors after his doping scandal was published. Kate Moss lost her position as the face of one of Chanel's famous perfumes when the world got exposed to her cocaine abuse in 2005, and Katy Perry was punished for losing her popularity in Europe by the styling giant GHD dropping her as an ambassador in 2013.
White, Goddard & Wilbur (2009) found evidence for consumers evaluating products less favorable if the product was endorsed by a celebrity that was associated with unfavorable actions. Miciak & Shanklin (1994, p. 52) also argue that «A star whose image is tarnished by allegations of illicit, unethical, unusual, or even slightly unconventional behavior immediately turns into an albatross for the advertiser». White et al. (2009) argue for this transfer of associations to be a result of people's perception of new exposure being influenced by how we see significant others (people whom you expect more from). This could lead into transference of associations about e.g. trustworthiness, authority and likability, based on past experiences from their childhood, onto new opinion leaders. By that, this will also have an effect on how people views new products that are being endorsed by celebrities. (White et al., 2009)
2.8 The one who speaks takes the noise
Marketing products and brands through micro influencers gives the receiver a feeling of the message being represented by the content creator (influencer) rather than an advertiser. This is due to consumers absence of knowledge related to whether the micro influencer talks nicely about the brand because they are paid for it, or if they truly like the brand. (Gong & Li, 2017) This also reduces one of the risks related to celebrity endorsement as Keller (2013) states that consumers can think the celebrity is only promoting the product in exchange for money, and not
because the celebrity feels that the product is worth using. A recent disclosure regarding this risk, relates to the collaboration between Kendall Jenner and Proactive. Kendall Jenner, who is a role model for many young girls, revealed that she had struggled with acne in her younger days and that Proactive was her rescue.
It was later known that she had been using world famous skin experts and not Proactive for her problem with acne. Media and public was quick to disclaim her endorsement based on comments she had made about her skin in earlier interviews.
When humans are collaborating with brands, linkages between celebrities and brands are being established. If brands are in trouble this can also affect the image of the celebrity, but White et al (2009) found that brands will be punished harder than the celebrity when engaging in such unethical actions.
Consumers relation to micro influencers falls somewhere between celebrities and close relations, as consumers admires them like celebrities, but also trust them as they were family and friends. (Britner, 2018) With online social media influencers, followers are in the good faith that content creators are writing product suggestions because they are inner motivated by the product, and do not believe that the person would be writing fake product recommendations in exchange for something else.
(Becker-Olsen, 2003) Audrezet et al. (2018) argue for this by stating that social media activities is about expressing information that deals with true love for the product and states that «…SMI production may be not only simply a means to an end (i.e., to please followers or marketers, to obtain financial compensation, etc.) but also the mean in itself». (Audrezet et al., 2018, p. 3)
Based on this, we believe that when engaging in collaborations with micro influencers brands will not be punished as hard as the micro influencer when the micro influencer engage in controversial actions not in direct involvement with the brand. This is due to people perceiving the collaboration less as advertising, and more as a product recommendation from a “friend”.
H2: Brands that collaborates with micro influencer will experience less harm than influencers when influencers engage in controversial actions, as consumers perceives the collaboration to be a recommendation from the influencer.
2.9 Micro influencers, either lifestyle or expert
According to Abidin (2015), lifestyle influencers are focusing more on their everyday life, and updates their followers about their daily activities several times a day (Abidin, 2013). In Norway, typical lifestyle influencers can be recognized as Sophie Elise, Isabell Raad or Kristine Ullebø. These are all influencers that uses their social media platforms to connect with followers by giving them access to their ups and downs through their everyday life. Besides this, they are also giving their followers tips and recommendations provided by both themselves and brands.
As these are influencers that shares exclusive aspects of their life with their followers, followers are more likely to be more emotionally attached to them.
(Abidin, 2015)
On the other hand, expert micro influencers are considered as influencers that are perceived to have expertise within various fields. Abidin (2015) states that opposite of lifestyle influencers, they do «hide» themselves behind certain themes as e.g.
parenting, training or food. As they are more focused on their themes, these kinds of micro influencers are not that open about their personal life, making their followers not being that emotionally attached to them. Some well-known expert influencers in Norway are «Funkygine» (expert within training), «Pappahjerte»
(parenting) and «Lavkarbo med Hanne» (Food). They are all focusing on their categories when publishing content and their followers perceive them to have expertise within their categories.
2.10 Micro influencers and product type
As brands now uses these types of influencers to promote their products, they will have to consider which influencer that fits best to promote which brand. Melnyk et al, (2012); Klein & Melnyk (2016) argues for consumers to process utilitarian- and hedonic brands different. Cognitive evaluation will be more important when processing utilitarian products and feelings to be weighted more when processing hedonic products. As cognitive processing is more important when evaluating utilitarian products, consumers are more likely to involve themselves within the process by doing more research. (Gürhan-Canli & Maheswaran, 1998; Klein &
Melnyk (2016) As social media has evolved to be a source for product information (Oetterbacher, 2013), more people are looking for advice from social media. Here, influencers do have the power of persuading consumers to believe that the product
holds favorable attributes and by that they are able to increase the products utilitarian value (Chae, Stephen, Bart & Yao, 2016). We believe that this will be the case for expert micro influencers as they are known for possessing great knowledge and passion about their favorite activity. (Frothingham, 2016) Besides this, they are assumed to put a lot of time and effort in learning about products that fits with their interests, (Frothingham, 2016) and by that being able to elaborate more on their products of interest, again increasing the value. Getting product advice about utilitarian products, from perceived expert influencers, is therefore more preferring as consumers tends to categorize utilitarian products as a way of satisfying a functional need rather than pleasure. (Klein & Melnyk, 2016)
Chae, et al. (2016, p. 93) explains that “utilitarian products are more often explained through actions and choices whereas hedonic products are more often explained through reactions and feeling”. When evaluating hedonic products consumers are engaging more in affective processing and will not find the quality of arguments as important, and rather rely on different cues (number of arguments, length of text and other emotional reactions). (Klein & Melnyk, 2016) Lifestyle micro influencers do connect with their followers by talking about their lives, and uses themselves and happenings throughout their days as a tool to make their followers feel more attached to them. (Abidin, 2015) As consumers perceives them to be their (social media) friend, their attachment to lifestyle influencers can be perceived as a reliable source when processing hedonic products. (Oetterbacher, 2013) Consumers are being affected by opinion leaders perception of brands, and lifestyle influencers have by that the opportunity to use their product reviews to increase personal attachment to hedonic products (Chae et al., 2016)
We believe that because of these connections between expert influencer and utilitarian products, and lifestyle influencer and hedonic products, followers will react less favorable to an expert influencer promoting a utilitarian product while portraying negative behavior than with a lifestyle influencer. The same goes for hedonic products. Because lifestyle influencers appeal more to emotions, negative behavior while promoting a hedonic brand will lead to more negative reactions towards that brand. Expert influencers are also known for just that: their expertise.
negative feedback than a lifestyle influencer, which in comparison only display themselves.
H3: Negative behavior from an expert influencer will lead to consumers evaluating the influencer less favorable when the expert influencer is paired with a utilitarian product.
H4: Negative behavior from a lifestyle influencer will lead to consumers evaluating the influencer less favorable when the lifestyle influencer is paired with a hedonic product.
2.11 Authority and social proof: tools for persuasion
Being perceived as possessing great knowledge within a field generates some authority. (Nair, Manchanda & Bhatia, 2010; Chae et al., 2016) Miligram (1979) conducted an experiment regarding how people relates to authority figures, and found that people are willing to go far in the context of obeying others with perceived authority. In his experiment, respondents were willing to expose others for deadly electricity when told to do so by an authority figure. Cialdini (2001) argues for authority to be an effective tool for persuasion. Expert-opinions are influencing decision making of others, as people perceives this as an easy way of making decisions. Micro influencers are perceived by their followers to possess great expertise within their area on content creation. (Lin et al., 2018)
Due to this, there are some similarities to be made between authority as we know it and influencer marketing. Their many followers are in the good faith of micro influencers recommending products they truly finds favorable, which gives influencers the opportunity to encourage their followers to try different products.
Brands are today exploiting this by requesting influencers to integrate their brands in their own personal taste, (Audrezet, et al., 2018) as they know how influential these people are on others attitude. (Bone, 1995; Esmar, Stevens, Breazeale &
Spaid, 2018) Due to this, influencers on social media are today generating most of their income by implementing brands within their posts.
Even though people are known to rely on authoritarian figures, Cialdini (2001, p.
75) also states that “...human beings rely heavily on the people around them for
cues on how to think, feel, and act” as well, which is a concept that deals with persuading people by using social proof. This was illustrated by Asch (1956), were he made respondents match three different lines with an external line. The actors in the experiment was told beforehand to choose the wrong line, with the purpose of gaining understanding about how respondents related to this. Even though it was obvious which line that had the same length as the external line, 75% of the people participating in the experiment chose to stay with the wrong answer as this was in accordance with what everyone else's chose. This experiment showed that people are being affected by social pressure even though it is obvious that the majority are wrong.
Cialdini (2001) also makes an example out of how people relates to others behavior by referring to an experiment done in 1982, first published in Journal of Applied Psychology. Here, researchers found that showing people a list of how many others that already had donated money to a good cause affected people's willingness to do the same. This is also the case for social media users, as online word of mouth allows people to learn about other consumers opinions. Consumers are using online recommendations from others as a reference point for their own opinions towards an object or a person. (Otterbacher, 2013)
2.12 Online social proof
An example of such a web site is IMDB were people can select which movies to watch, based on recommendations made by others. (Otterbacher, 2013) For example, if a film is given a score below what is perceived as good, a person might not choose to see the movie even though that was the person's intention in the first place. Another popular social web page were consumers are basing their choices by others reviews is Trip Advisor. Here, potential customers can base their next travelling decision on others experience and statements. This is a result of consumers using several social media channels as a way of gathering product information from their peers. Consumers do today value product related information from others, independent of the brand, as they sees this as a more reliable source. (Lim & Chung, 2014)
(2018) argues that online word of mouth can have huge impact on businesses performance as customers put a lot of trust into other customers’ opinions.
As consumers now have the opportunity to use social media for the purpose of making their own statements about influencers behavior, while reaching out to a greater audience, more pressure to perform are being put on brands. A reason for this is that customers that do feel dissatisfied about a product or service, are more likely to share this information compared to satisfied customers (Anderson, 1998;
Esmark et al., 2018) There are several reasons for customers to share negative information; revenge, entertainment, warnings and self-expression. (Esmark et al., 2018) Other people’s online reviews are therefore important to monitor, as Cone (2011); Esmark et al. (2018, p 892 ) argues that “four out of five online consumers have changed their purchase decisions based on a negative online product review”.
It is not just brands that are exposed to others having opinions about them. Today, money and fame are not the only thing that comes with being a public figure.
Besides all the benefits, public people will also have to relate to others having personal opinions about them. Especially now as “ordinary” people are free to write whatever they like on social media. A famous, Norwegian, blogger that struggled with being judged by the majority of the Norwegian people during 2018, is Isabel Raad (sraad.blogg.no). By being open about her going through several plastic surgeries, people used various social media platforms to write different opinions about her surgeries and how that made her a bad role model for many young girls.
Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, & Gremler (2004) states that one reason for people to engage within businesses in social media deals with consumption utility.
Even though they researched on businesses, we believe this can be used to explain the concept of micro influencers as they represent a type of brand. Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) states that consumers obtain consumption utility when they are able to read what other consumers thinks about the same thing. Besides giving value through reading others thoughts, reading what “the everyday man” thinks of an item is a motivating factor for other consumers to leave comments as well. When social media influencers engage in controversial actions (e.g. plastic surgeries), people are quick in making statements about how the negative action explains who that person is. When people first starts to engage with social media influencers platforms by writing positive (negative) comments, others can adapt the observed behavior.
According to social cognitive theory, “individuals observe others, interpret their
behavior, and adjust their own behavior in response”. (Stefanone, Lackaff &
Rosen, 2010, p. 512)
Lee & Kim (2012) also argues for social cognitive theory to be useful in social media, as it is relevant to explain what motivates consumers to express themselves within social media channels. Therefore, what kind of comments people choose to leave behind, can be affected by what other people are commenting. (Lee, Kim &
Kim, 2012)
Comments about someone, made by others, in social media is available for everyone to see. People’s comments can have an influential factor on the reader’s attitude as Fishbein & Ajzen (1975); Mishra, Akman & Mishra (2014) states that people will be affected by expectations from their environments. Haenschen (2016) uses Facebook as an example when saying that such social media platforms makes it easy to monitor others behavior while thinking they are also being watched. He argues that this will result in people changing their own behavior to ensure they comply with social norms.
Researchers have for a long time been using Theory of reasoned action to explain how people assess different situations, and the model explains how that one's attitude and subjective norms are influencing the viewer’s behavioral intentions.
(Ajzen, 1985; Doane, Pearson & Kelly, 2014) Fishbein & Ajzen (1975); Mishra et al (2014, p. 30) explains subjective norms as “the normative belief that a person complies with the expectations from other people, such as a person’s family or friends, supervisor, or society at large”.
We believe that subjective norms also will have an impact in social media as consumers are free to read what other people are thinking about an item, and by that having a need to perform in a way that is in accordance with what consumers perceives society to think.
H5: Negative (positive) comments in the comment section will strengthen (weaken) the effect in H3 and H4.
3.0 Methodology
3.1 Population (both studies)
Our convenience samples for both studies are based on the population of the Norwegian people in the age of 18 to 80 years old, who uses social media. We did not want to restrict the study to followers of influencers only, since everyone that are using social media may be exposed to influencers or other type of opinionleaders marketing through targeting ads based on their preferred topics. By not only using followers of specific influences, we were able to get a more nuanced picture of how consumers in general would react to negative behavior from opinionleaders.
3.2 Study design study 1
The hypotheses for our main study are based on a causal research design with true experiments with pre-tests and post-test as our main method. The experiment are based on a 2*2*3 study consisting of three independent variables with underlying groups; «Type of product» which consisted of two groups - hedonic and utilitarian,
«Type of micro influencer» which consisted of two groups - expert influencer and lifestyle influencer and «Type of comment section», which consisted of three groups - no comment section, positive comment section and negative comment section. We wanted to see whether there existed any three-way interaction effect by our independent variables on our dependent variables.
We manipulated our independent variables so that various respondents were exposed to different conditions. This was to be able to measure and establish the cause and effect relationship between our independent- and dependent variables between groups, as well as being able to see the changes in attitude after exposure of treatment. (Malhotra, 2010)
To test our hypotheses empirically, we performed one large-scale study for hypotheses H2, H3, H4 and H5 addressing the theme of whether micro influencers bad behavior has an impact on brand attitude and purchase intention. As well as if commentary sections can convey the readers opinions based on the principle of social proof, and again affect brand attitude and purchase intention.
We decided to solely look at the negative behavior of micro influencers, and excluded any positive or normal behavior since we were not interested in the
difference between behavior only the devastating effect that a negative behavior can result in.
3.3 Data collection
Data was collected by using a convenience sample from our Facebook- and Instagram friends as well as physical collection at Nydalen. We also encouraged our friends to share the questionnaire online to their own follower base, making the response rate as high as possible as well as gaining a better distribution between men, women and age. The questionnaire was then shared in private Facebook groups, on people's Facebook walls as well as through the Messenger app and Instagram direct messages. This strategy was quite successful, giving us 758 recorded responses in total. It is important to notice that using a convenience sampling like this, could weaken our external validity. (Malhotra, 2010)
3.4 Questionnaire build up
All respondents was provided with a questionnaire consisting of 10 blocks with 9 questions and 44 sub-questions in total. The questions were a mixture of five point likert scale, single answer matrix tables, single answer multiple choice and one line text entry. Measured on respectively a nominal and ordinal/scale level. We decided to use a consistent, but few numbers, of different question types to avoid confusing the respondents as well as making the answering process as easy as possible. This way we ensured that fewer people would drop out of the questionnaire due to psychological- or technical difficulties. All pre- and post-test questions was made in the same question form, scale level and with the same type of answering alternatives. This way we were able to compare results between tests as well as making the conversion process easier.
Before the survey was handed out, we performed a pretest on a sample from our population to make sure the degree of difficulty in language, sentences, instructions and the flow of the survey was understandable and appropriate for our population.
(Malhotra, 2010) After making small adjustments from our feedback, we were ready to launch the final version (Appendix 2 questionnaire 1 Study 1).
3.5 Procedure
At the beginning of the survey, all respondents was informed of the experiment as well as their voluntary participation. They were asked to confirm or deny their participation. If “yes”, the voluntary participation continued until the respondent decided to end their participation, and if “no”, respondents were immediately directed to the end of the survey. After confirming or denying their participation, each respondent was randomly assigned into one of 12 blocks consisting of different treatments (See model 1 bellow), starting with a pre-test.
Four of the twelve blocks consisted of randomized type of influencer (expert or lifestyle), presenting bad behavior, and type of product (hedonic: Nike or utility:
Nivea). The eight remaining blocks were identical to the four first blocks, only adding a negative- or positive comment section to each blog-post. We choose both influencers to be women since there are more women influencers in Norway. They are usually more popular and women tend to be the larger part of follower bases of influencers, making female influencers more credible to use.
